Are there extraterrestrials among us? There are sightings every day. And yet no official disclosure from the government. The problem is, even elected officials do not know. However some do, and they have actually have made public disclosures on this.
PUBLIC DISCLOSURE
First, here is an interview from 2014 where Paul Hellyer, the former Defense Minister of Canada, reveals that not only are extraterrestrials here, but there are over 80 species of them, and some of them look human and can walk among us:
This is someone who has absolutely no reason to lie. He was a Defense Minister of one of the G8 nations. Why tarnish his legacy now and subject himself to ridicule? While he served the Canadian government a Canadian researcher Wilbur Smith began a government project called Project Magnet to prove the existence of UFOs. When his project successfully detected a UFO, the government promptly shutdown the project. Wilbur Smith made inquiries into what the U.S. Government knew, and wrote this in a letter:
I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:This was back in the 1950s, when there was a large influx of UFOs, apparently in response to our discovery of the atomic bomb. According to Paul Hellyer, they are again concerned we may yet still use the atomic bomb again in a future war. According to Paul Hellyer, the extraterrestrials think we are bad stewards of our planet, and waste so much effort in warfare, and that something bad will happen to the planet if we don't correct our course. Where do they come from? In addition to mentioning the Pleiades and Zeta Reticuli, Paul Hellyer straight out says some of them come within our own Solar System: specifically Venus, Mars, and one of the moons of Saturn which they call "Andromedia." But more on that later.
a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.
b. Flying saucers exist.
c. Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.
d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.
I was further informed that the United States authorities are investigating along quite a number of lines which might possibly be related to the saucers such as mental phenomena and I gather that they are not doing too well since they indicated that if Canada is doing anything at all in geo-magnetics they would welcome a discussion with suitably accredited Canadians.
For those who want an official disclosure from the U.S. Government, in 2010 Henry W. McElroy, Jr, retiring State Representative to New Hampshire, stated that former U.S. President Eisenhower was briefed about the presence of extraterrestrial intelligent beings on Earth. McElroy also said that the document he viewed while at the State Legislature made reference to the presence of extraterrestrials in the United States of America, and an opportunity for Eisenhower to meet the alien visitors:
Circumstantial evidence from various sources suggest that President Eisenhower did meet with extraterrestrials, and this took place in 1954 at Edwards Air Force Base in California. See The Presidents UFO Website: Dwight D. Eisenhower. Other sources state that there were meetings with two groups: one group of extraterrestrials offered spiritual knowledge if we gave up developing the atomic bomb as a weapon. This offer was rejected. Another group of extraterrestrials offered technology, in exchange for allowing them to do human genetic experimentation on our population. This offer was accepted.
At some point during his administration, President Eisenhower was afraid that the U.S. Government had lost control of the extraterrestrial situation, and that too much power was being concentrated in the U.S. military industrial complex. He was frustrated that a secret control group, MJ-12, were failing to report back to him. He then basically threatened the officials of Area 51 that he would raise the army and invade the facility if they did not cooperate. This story comes from a confession of a former military and CIA official that were sent to Area 51 by President Eisenhower to assess the situation in 1958. They were sent there to give them a personal message: either cooperate and report back, or he would raise the first army out of Colorado and overrun the base:
He states Project Blue Book was a fraud, designed to deceive the public. But they, as part of the CIA, got the real cases. They went to Area 51, and reported back to President Eisenhower. Area 51 possessed various flying saucers, one at least from the Roswell crash, and was working on extraterrestrial technology. The saucers were powered by a "reverse gravitation" of some kind. Not only that, but they also had a live extraterrestrial entity whom they were interrogating at the time. President Eisenhower, when he heard this, was shocked. He told them that none of this should be revealed ever to the public.
AREA 51 AND FLYING SAUCER RESEARCH
A former contractor at Area 51, Bob Lazar, came out in 1989 about how he briefly worked on reverse engineering flying saucers. Here is a brief documentary on his disclosure back then:
Here is a more recent interview from 2014, where he still holds to his story. Older and wiser, he regrets having told the public, and has since moved on:
Here is part 2 of the interview that did not make it on the news, where he reveals a bit more on some gravitational experiements: time slows down within a gravitational field, and with anti-gravitation, ships that travel in space have shielding from cosmic radiation:
Now if that were not enough, Boyd Bushman, who holds over 20 patents with Lockheed Martin, in 2014 gave an interview before he passed away in which he not only revealed that he worked on reverse engineering extraterrestrial flying saucers at Area 51, but stated that there were aliens present at the base. And he pulls up photographs showing saucers as well as aliens. They came from a star system 68 light years away, and would communicate telepathically, from which he states he had derived information for his patents. Here is a short summary of the interview:
The interesting thing here is he shows a saucer on the ground, and another of a saucer in flight. In flight, it generates a "corona discharge" around its hull, which is exactly what Bob Lazar had reported. Here is the full interview given before he died, but he had given earlier ones in which he had revealed he had worked on flying saucer technology:
These are separate witnesses of different backgrounds, some highly qualified individuals. There is no "hoax" here, this is not "psychological." They have no reason to lie. Nor did they all sit in a room all together, and decide to be quiet about it until right before they die. For example, Boyd Bushman worked for Lockheed Martin. Ben Rich, CEO of Lockheed Skunkworks, also came out and said that we have developed technology that allows us to reach the stars, we have the technology to bring ET home - which he also revealed before he died in 1995:
THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL HUMANS
Dmitry Medvedev, 10th Prime Minister of Russia, with Vladimir Putin
On this topic, I want to focus on one particular group of reported extraterrestrials: those that look human exactly like us. They could walk among us and we would not even know it. And this was confirmed accidentally by the Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, in what was supposed to be "off the air" comments. From Russian PM not joking - extraterrestrials among us according to MIB documentary:
"Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s off-air comments that Russian Presidents are given a secret file about extraterrestrials living among us created much media interest. Most news reports claimed that Medvedev was simply joking. His apparent reference to the Men In Black movie as a source of information on a super secret agency that monitors extraterrestrials on Earth was commonly cited as key evidence that he was in fact joking. The reasoning is that no political leader would refer reporters to a comedy to clarify national policy. It has now emerged that Medvedev was not referring to the Men in Black comedy after all, but to a recent Russian television documentary titled “Men in Black” that reveals many details about an extensive cover up of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth."The above is an example of how the media is used to distort the facts. At a Disclosure Project media event, Sergeant Clifford Stone testified that as of 1989 the U.S. military had catalogued about 57 extraterrestrial species that were visiting earth:
So who is Sergeant Clifford Stone? He claims to have been part of a unit in the U.S. army that was involved in UFO crash retrievals. From a young age, Sergeant Clifford Stone demonstrated some psychic abilities. He somehow caught the interest of the U.S. military, who needed people with that ability to communicate with extraterrestrials. For many of them can only communicate telepathically. After he left military service, he took what he knew and applied Freedom of Information Acts to have the government release information, on which he published a book, UFOs are Real. PDF Link to the entire book can be found here. Moreover, Sergeant Clifford Stone appeared in a Disney documentary on UFOs that was censored by the media, in which Disney CEO Michael Eisner appears to introduce the movie: see The Censored Disney Documentary on Extraterrestrials. So why would Disney put so much effort into a documentary, only to have is censored by the U.S. media? Its because certain agencies do not want the public to know.
So now we know who Sergeant Clifford Stone is. But how to verify such a claim? In the above clip, Sergeant Clifford Stone says the following about the human extraterrestrials:
"You have individuals that look very much like you and myself that can walk among us and you wouldn't even notice the difference. Except for some of the things -- they might be able to go ahead, even in a dark room, and touch an object, and go ahead and identify what color that object might be. They would have a heightened sense of smell, sight, hearing..."Touching an object in the dark, and identifying its color? Perhaps some psychic ability, but does not seem believable. So when did Clifford Stone give this speech? The clip is actually from the National Press Club in Washington D.C., and it took place on May 9, 2001. See the following video link which begins where Sergeant Clifford Stone gives his testimony, but there are many other witnesses: 2001 National Press Club Event.
That was the year 2001, and soon after most would forget about it due to the events of September 11. However in 2009 a news report emerged in China of a young boy Nong Yousui with strangely blue eyes, who could see in the dark (see Does China's Cat-Eyed Boy Really Have Night Vision?). This was picked up in western media in the year 2012:
Notice, when the young boy comes out in the sunlight, he has to shield his eyes from the light. Medical experts state an examination is in order, but some suspect he has a rod-rich retina. Here is another case, of a blue eyed boy in Pakistan, who also can read in the dark - video was posted in 2012:
So what this points out here, is that the human extraterrestrials that Sergeant Clifford Stone encountered probably did not determine the color of an object in the dark by touching it, but rather they have rod-rich retinas that are sensitive to light and can see in darkness. Which means, they probably had blue eyes.
Now, wind back the clock to the early 1950s, where there were numerous UFO sightings and several UFO contactees. One of them was Howard Menger from New Jersey (see A Telepathic Dream of a Song from Saturn). He wrote an account of his encounters with human extraterrestrials in his book, From Outer Space to You, published in 1956. I skimmed through it, and found this interesting passage:
"The men, particularly the Venusians, had unusually fair skin, without hair on their arms or face, and had no need to shave. After three months on Earth, however, they became hairy and grew beards. Most of them waited the three month period so they would have beards to shave and appear more like earth people.So a likely explanation is that these human extraterrestrials have evolved and developed in such a way where they are acclimated more to darkness than our sunlight during the day (see The Extraterrestrial Christianity of UMMO, where the Ummites preferred to be active during our nights). That this is probably correct, is shown that after 3 months here on earth, these Venusian extraterrestrials started to grow body hair and needed to shave. This was the early 1950s. The likely explanation is that it is now known that exposure to sunlight produces Vitamin D in the body. One of the affects that Vitamin D has is that it helps hair growth, and it is still a current area of scientific study. Note that, it was not proven that Vitamin D is produced by exposure to sunlight until 1978. From History of the discovery of vitamin D and its active metabolites:
Some of them requested dark glasses: a few asked for dark glasses with red glass, which was difficult to obtain. I don't know why they wanted dark glasses, for those I had met previously had not worn them.
There were so many things to ask about I never remembered to inquire, though I presumed the glasses were used to acclimate their eyes to the glare of the sunlight here, which probably is more intense than the light on their planets."
In 1935, 7-dehydrocholesterol was isolated by Windaus et al.30 and vitamin D3 was identified in 1937 by the Windaus and Bock.31 Vitamin D3 is the natural form of vitamin D formed in the skin as a result of UV irradiation of 7-dehydrocholesterol. This then raised the question of whether vitamin D is a true vitamin or whether it is normally produced in the skin and is not found in natural foods. Although it was surmised that vitamin D3 arises in skin via the irradiation of 7-dehydrocholesterol, this was not proven until 1978 when Esvelt et al.32 actually isolated and identified vitamin D3 by mass spectrometry. Before this, Holick et al.33 provided evidence that previtamin D3 is formed in the skin on UV irradiation.Only recently has it been scientifically demonstrated that low levels of Vitamin D contribute to hair loss in women (see Eat This for Thicker Hair.) Research on this is still ongoing, evidence is mostly anecdotal. From Vitamin D and Hair:
"Many scientists and dermatologists believe that vitamin D can play a big role in preventing hair loss as well as fostering hair growth. Research shows that hair follicles contain vitamin D receptors that play an important role in the hair follicle cycle. This was first apparent during the studies of patients with a type of vitamin D dependent rickets who developed alopecia. The exact manner in which these vitamin D receptors function remains unknown, but studies in animals have found that consumption of vitamin D3 and its analogs can stimulate hair growth. These results have however, not been duplicated in human trials, but that may be because stronger analogs were used in the animal tests?.So, although one is very unlikely to meet an extraterrestrial, if you happen to be noticing too much hair on the drain after you take a shower you now know what to do about it.
Anecdotal evidence does suggest that vitamin D can stimulate hair growth or even slow down hair loss. And while research in this regard does remain inconclusive, no one disputes the importance of vitamin D in maintaining hair health."
Point is this was unknown in the 1950s at the time Howard Menger related his story concerning pale skinned Venusians. One of them who had attended one of his meetings in New Jersey would later make contact with a Christian minister, Frank Stranges. He told him that on Venus, they live underground, which could explain their sensitivity to light.
THE VISIONS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
One of the main reasons that the spiritual visions of Emanuel Swedenborg have been disregarded by many, is that in the 18th century he clairvoyantly made contact with extraterrestrials, who he said were from our solar system - including Venus, Mars and Saturn. And yet it is well documented that he had accurate clairvoyant visions (see The Confirmed Clairvoyance of Emanuel Swedenborg). Corroborating Swedenborg's experiences with extraterrestirals, as of 2014 we now have the former minister of Defense for Canada, Paul Hellyer, stating that there are extraterrestrials visiting us who are from Venus, Mars and a moon of Saturn. Most of these are inhospitable to life on the surface (the scientific view on Mars has changed dramatically in the last few years). The most likely explanation is that they are from an advanced race, living underground, and are thus sensitive to direct sunlight. As to their history, one contact explained they originated from the star system of Tau Ceti, and they have been here a long, long time (see Extraterrestrial Contact from Tau Ceti, Venus and Mars), and they know much more about our ancient history that has since been lost to us.
What is more important here, however, is that the existence of extraterrestrials was not the main point of the spiritual visions of Emanuel Swedenborg. The main point was that he was given a new revelation concerning Christianity and Jesus Christ, the reality of the afterlife, and proof of the Divine inspiration of many of the books of the Bible. He explains where the Catholic and Protestant churches have departed from the true message of Jesus, and corrects their theology. This is the main point here. Even in his reported contacts with extraterrestrials, the main points of the conversation with them were concerning their views of the one God. The visions are comprehensive and span over 27 years, and will answer just about every question one could have on spiritual matters. And in modern contacts, this is the main worry of certain extraterrestrials: we are developing too fast technologically, and are far behind in terms of ethics, spirituality, and applying the universal laws to our own lives.
Here is Eye in the Sky, by Alan Parsons Project, which is rather appropriate considering the subject:
Posts
Another way to see the ET is a visitor from another universe. Many worlds, many Earths.
ReplyDeleteNot all in the same location and cosmic conditions. Then that would explain why traveling to inhabited worlds requires both technology and psychic navigation, for some Earths.
Others would not need that combination, due to originating in what could be termed more "original spacetime".
Or, to put it another way, if the Garden is the template, then not all the children are as cursed with locality as others. Does not mean they are of a different nature, just retain more of the original instinct to go where commanded.
Of course, that would suggest this Earth as being more of a collection of places, times, and beings from all over. A womb, or reservoir, as it were. Such a nexus of entanglement would be an attractor for any version of Man; good, bad, indifferent, or other.
Hi Doug,
ReplyDeleteIt's all very shadowy and indistinct. Watching some of these videos, and looking up a bit of the background, convinces me even more that this is a psychological/spiritual phenomenon, and not something people are experiencing with their physical senses. All the videos I've seen of "actual UFOs" are also very fuzzy and indistinct. You'd think that by now, if they were real, someone would have gotten a clear photo or video of one. But so far none seems to exist.
The whole thing seems to be based on wishful thinking that turns fuzzy photos and videos, the "confessions" of old, retired men, and the claims of wacky New Age gurus into a vast edifice of fantastical beliefs about aliens.
I just don't buy it. As I've said before, if UFOs were real, they'd be all over the news. And as I've said before, government simply isn't competent enough to suppress a story this big.
Further, the reports about UFOs and alien civilizations simply don't support what Swedenborg said about people on other planets. Swedenborg described simple, non-technological, spiritually oriented societies living on the surface of earth-like planets. If the supposed inhabitants of Mars and Venus had spaceships and lived underground, that in itself would contradict everything Swedenborg wrote about them.
I'm sorry you've gotten hooked into the whole UFO scene. I know you think it supports what Swedenborg wrote in Earths in the Universe, but it simply doesn't. I suppose there is nothing I can say to dissuade you from your views. And perhaps your blog will serve a purpose in reaching out to UFO enthusiasts with Swedenborg's ideas. But by the same token, the UFO stuff will severely limit your ability to reach out to everyone else. And that is unfortunate, because you have a devotion to and understanding of Swedenborg's doctrines that is rare among people who come from non-Swedenborgian backgrounds.
My own more pragmatic, and I think more scientific, view of Earths in the Universe is encapsulated in this article:
Aliens vs. Advent: Swedenborg’s 1758 Book on Extraterrestrial Life
Hello Lee,
DeleteThese are not shadowy indistinct witnesses. We have former government officials, scientists with patents, pilots, and radar reports. Bush Boydmann has over 20 patents with Lockheed Martin. And there are clear photos that have been analyzed as genuine. And there is not one month that goes by without a report of a UFO. If you look at the Disclosure Project we have separate independent witnesses, from all walks of life, but mainly concentrating on witnesses from military, government and scientists.
If for your evidence, you want it in the news, there is not a week that goes by with this not in the news. So, I went right now to Google News, looked up UFO, and found this posted 13 hours ago:
British UFO encounter "gave me heart failure", says US airman after military chiefs agree to pay his medical bills
"Airman First Class John Burroughs was involved in an incident in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980 which has become known as "Britain's Roswell". He was exposed to huge doses of radiation whilst investigating a mysterious craft and claimed this left him in need of "lifesaving" heart surgery. After decades of being "stonewalled", he has finally persuaded the US Veteran's Association (VA) to pay for his treatment."
And that happens to be a famous case with multiple witnesses. There are separate witnesses who have also come too close to such craft and have suffered radioactive poisoning. If you look at Lazar's and Bushman's testimony, when a saucer enters into flight a corona discharge surrounds it, and there is a gravitational field that surrounds it that bends the light around the craft.
Nevertheless, if you are looking for a sharp photograph, or photographic analysis by independent experts, that has already been done many times before.
As for what Swedenborg saw, it is quite possible that he was seeing extraterrestrials whose planetary environment had long since been destroyed. Also, on the technology front, he did not ask that same question to all the ones he encountered. Some were "higher" than where he dwelled, of higher intelligence, and for Venus they were experts in the knowledge of material things, and for Mercury they had a tendency to travel between solar systems. Factual technological information is not something that is relayed in the spiritual world, only spiritual topics. The mind there is divorced from material factual information.
So Lee, I understand its not a popular topic, just when the Catholic Church said the earth was flat when all evidence pointed to a spherical earth. If you want evidence, tell me what you want, we have it. If you want photographic evidence that has been independently analyzed, I will dig up a case for you. If you are expecting the government to actually tell the public the truth, that is another matter. Government is not there to tell the public the truth, it is there to hold onto power and control.
Hello Lee - another sample: Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken - one was taken by someone in Air Force intelligence in South Africa. And here is a video that was analyzed by a NASA scientist: http://youtu.be/EttKw7ROGN8 In addition to all of this, one has to consider the witness testimony.
DeleteHi Doug,
DeleteIf those are the ten best photos of UFOs ever taken, then they prove my point. Even the best of them has nothing like the clarity of photos of airplanes in flight, rockets taking off and in flight, birds in flight, and any number of other identified flying objects that are photographed every day. If that is the best that the UFO community can come up with, then I consider my case to be solidly demonstrated.
Some of those photos are from the 1950s and that is as sharp as it gets, so I am not sure what exactly are you looking for. There is another photo of a saucer accompanied by fighter jets, that was independently verified and could not have been faked from Puerto Rico. Not all are necessarily the best, but were accompanied by traceable witness testimony. You have to consider witness testimony - for example see the military and scientific witnesses - there are hundreds of them - some in this 2001 National Press Club event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkswXVmG4xM I doubt they all got in a room together to say, let's lie about something that does not exist. If one really wants to insist they are not there, I guess one could reach and say the American or British military have flying saucers which emitted radiation doses to servicemen in Rendleshem forest in 1980. And there are are declassified military and government documents which concluded that these things are not from earth, and are worthy of further study.
DeleteHi Doug,
DeleteDo a Google image search for "airplane in flight," "bird in flight," "rocket in flight," or any other aerial phenomenon, and you will see beautiful, crisp, color pictures of all of these things.
That is what I am looking for.
If UFOs are real, there is no reason whatsoever that we should not have pictures of them that are just as clear and crisp as we do of any other flying thing. Even our images of galaxies millions of light years away are clearer than the clearest photos we have of supposed UFOs.
What I'm asking is very simple: Even a single really clear picture of a UFO.
We have millions, if not billions, of clear, crisp pictures of everything else in the sky. We have not a single clear, crisp picture of a UFO. If UFOs were real, we should have at least thousands of such pictures. We have zero.
I'm not interested in reasons or excuses as to why we don't have such photos.
I'm interested in real photographic evidence equal to the photographic evidence we have of everything studied by science.
So do you believe that government documents are 100% accurate and factual?
DeleteGovernment is still just ordinary human beings. And if anything, government is characterized by more lies, fallacies, and falsity than the private sector.
Even if some declassified government documents do offer opinions that UFOs are real and not from this earth, so what? How is that really any different than ordinary citizens saying that UFOs are real and not from this earth? Are government workers omniscient?
In fact, the huge focus on government conspiracies, cover-ups, leaks, and declassified documents is one of the main reasons I think the whole thing is not real.
If UFOs were real, government would have little say in the matter. It would be scientists studying the skies and aerial phenomena that would be the primary source of information. Government intelligence is so "good" that in major crises government officials watch the private TV news networks to get most of their information.
What I'm looking for is not declassified government documents, but real scientific evidence for the existence of UFOs as something other than terrestrial phenomena that we just don't understand, or psychological phenomena based on fears in the atomic age.
Ok Lee, sharp photograph, 1600 x 1200 pixels, two shots of a triangular craft from 2010: Greenville SC Triangular UFO. However I suspect this is one of ours from a black budget project, see TR-3B Black Triangle: Man Made Anti Gravity Craft?. Which is why I prefer the older photos. This is the domain of science, which is why I quoted Boyd Bushman, who has given other interviews on this matter.
DeleteBetter, color 2048 x 1536 photos, with multiple witnesses, immobilized two cars. January 8, 2006 - Zdany, Poland
DeleteHi Doug,
DeleteSo now we're supposed to accept "evidence" from people driving home drunk from a wedding, who wish to remain anonymous?
To me the object in the photos looks like a couple of metal bowls welded together and thrown up into the air.
I'd say that Sputnik 1 had better design and technology than the tin can in those photos. Can't these super-advanced alien civilizations come up with something better than our earliest, crudest spacecraft?
No, what I'm looking for is clear, crisp photos of an advanced alien spacecraft that looks like it was built by a race that is more technologically advanced than we are.
It's got to be at least as good as the space shuttle.
Sorry to be so harsh, but these photos confirm for me that those who believe in UFOs are willing to grasp at any straw, and swallow hole any fuzzy photos accompanied by some cockamamie story as long as it supports their totally unscientific and irrational fascination with a phenomena that simply doesn't exist.
The Boyd Bushman "deathbed confessions" are most likely a hoax or a rather sad case of an old man with dementia. Snopes.com sums it up, but there are plenty of other articles on the web pointing out how shaky the story is.
DeleteThe "deathbed confessions" of old men is not a good source of evidence for UFOs.
Here is scientific material evidence which has been examined by experts, concerning the phenomenon of cattle mutilations. These are not done by animal predators, but high precision surgical instruments are involved which extract specific organs. See the documentary "Strange Harvest" by investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe: A Strange Harvest UFO Cattle Mutilation Documentary by Linda Moulton Howe 1980, or this more recent presentation by Richard D. Hall about a research team in England involving a pathologist: Animal Mutilation & The Government Cover Up. His documentary is here: Silent Killers. The images and content are graphic, so be forewarned.
DeleteHello Lee, just saw those comments and published them, haven't had time to review them all. I had already seen the critiques of Boyd Bushman, there is nothing there that proves or disproves it. I doubt someone who holds over 20 patents with Lockheed Martin would decide to then say, "sorry, I didn't come up with these ideas, the aliens gave it to me."
DeleteFor photographs, yes, one should consider the witness and the source, I was just going by "sharpness" which is what I thought you were looking for. So, go with one taken by a military pilot with their gun camera, along with confirmed radar hit, and sighting by multiple witnesses: MILITARY PILOT PHOTOGRAPHS A UFO OVER ITALY. What I regard as the ones that are genuine tend to not have a sharp outline due to a possible field distortion around the object.
Related to the testimony of Boyd Bushman, we have the testimony of Don Philips, contractor for the USAF and CIA, who worked for Lockheed Skunkworks. He confirms, yes, they were involved in reverse engineering technology of an extraterrestrial origin: Lockheed Skunkworks employee speaks out "Technology from Extraterrestrials"
DeleteAgain, related to the testimony of Boyd Bushman, Don Philips, we have the testimony of Lt. Colonel Philip J. Corso, who was also on the staff of President Eisenhower's National Security Council: Philip J. Corso. He was responsible for seeding different contractor companies with source material derived from an extraterrestial origin.
DeleteAlso, the business of government suppressing knowledge of UFOs is just ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteSince when does government control the flow of all information in the Western world? UFOs and UFO sightings are all over YouTube and the Internet. There is a vast quantity of material out there. Yet not a scrap of it has enough scientific basis that any reputable scientist pays any attention to it at all.
Why would an extraterrestrial civilization even bother with human governments? For the most part they're ineffective, destructive, and incompetent. Any rational alien civilization that wanted to influence our world would bypass government altogether and go directly to the people, as happens in most science fiction accounts of alien visitations.
It is amusing to me how much vast power UFO enthusiasts think governments have. And yet, they can barely even balance their own budgets, and every social program they try ends out being a huge boondoggle that spends vast amounts of money for rather small results, and fails to stamp out the social ills they are supposed to fix.
The government cannot keep even its most secret secrets secret, such as the fact that it is collecting phone and internet records on every single one of its citizens, and storing that information for present and future use whenever and wherever it sees fit, with little or no oversight. When Snowden revealed that information, it went viral, and remains in the news to this day because it is true.
If there were anything to the UFO stuff and government conspiracies to cover it up, the same thing would have happened.
But it hasn't.
Instead, the whole UFO enthusiast culture relies on vast conspiracy theories unsupported by any real, scientific evidence. It's shot full of contradictions and fuzzy, irrational, unscientific thinking. The "best" videos I've seen are so full of holes that only someone who is already convinced that UFOs are real would give them any credence whatsoever.
I'm sorry, but to any outside, objective observer, the whole thing looks like a craze and a mania, and entirely unscientific and irrational.
To me, the whole UFO phenomenon is a huge testament to Swedenborg's statement that we humans can convince ourselves that any falsity is true, and become so convinced of it that we will swear that it is the absolute truth even though it is completely false.
Hi Doug,
ReplyDeleteI accidentally signed out when I intended to post one of my comments yesterday, specifically on Swedenborg, and it looks like the comment was lost, so I'll re-create (and expand on) what I said in it.
I'm aware of the speculation that perhaps the inhabitants of the other planets in our solar system were inhabited long ago, even if they are not presently habitable.
The major problem with this is the bad science involved. The other planets in our solar system, including Venus and Mars, not only are not habitable now, but our best science says that they were never habitable by advanced life-forms. The best scientists hope for is that simple organisms may have developed on Mars, and perhaps on one or two of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn.
Swedenborg himself was aware of the possibility of a planet becoming uninhabitable. He said that in that case, the spirits from that planet would be associated with another inhabited planet.
However, in Earths in the Universe #42 he maps out the planetary regions in the spiritual world for all of the then-known planets in our solar system, and says that the spirits from each planet are associated with that planet. So there is no question that he believed that the planets in our solar system were currently inhabited in his own time.
Based both on the science involved and on Swedenborg's own statements, the idea that the spirits he talked to were from a previous time when the planets were habitable, even though they are now habitable, simply doesn't hold water.
In the case of one or two of the planets outside our solar system, Swedenborg was able to see the physical surface conditions through the eyes of a inhabitants still living in their physical bodies on the planet. So we know that in that case, Swedenborg saw the planet as currently inhabited.
If any of the planets were not habitable any longer, that would have been a major event. It strains credulity to think that Swedenborg would not mention it.
So once again, this particular speculation just won't work. It's clear from Swedenborg's own statements that he believed that all of the planets whose spirits he talked to were still inhabited. And yet, we know from science that those planets are not, in fact, inhabited, nor are they habitable by advanced life forms.
(continued)
ReplyDeleteThe underground hypothesis also doesn't work. For each planet, Swedenborg describes an ordinary, earth-like surface environment with fields, houses, trees, rivers, oceans, sun, and stars very much like the surface environment on earth. Such environments could not exist underground.
It is abundantly clear that Swedenborg saw the inhabitants of all the planets covered in Earths in the Universe as living on the surface of their planets, not underground.
In the case of the "fourth planet in the starry heavens" described in Earths in the Universe #157-167, we now know that the surface environment he described there could not possibly exist on the planet as he describes it, since it would have been so small (see #167, and my comment on it in the "Aliens vs. Advent" article linked above) that there would not be sufficient gravity for it to have an atmosphere.
Unfortunately for those who still want to believe that Swedenborg was right about the other planets in our solar system being inhabited, our present-day scientific knowledge correlated with Swedenborg's own statements in Earths in the Universe makes that simply impossible.
It is long past time that we recognized that Swedenborg was mistaken on this point due to the limited science of his day. Continuing attempts to support the idea that the other planets in our solar system is inhabited does more to discredit Swedenborg than to support him. It requires us to accept junk science, and reject all of the good new science that we have about the habitability of other planets.
Ironically, attempting to maintain Swedenborg's literal scientific infallibility puts us in the exact same position as the Christian fundamentalists attempting to maintain the literal, scientific infallibility of the seven days of Creation, the Flood, and so on, in the Bible.
Swedenborg himself provided the antidote to that sort of faulty reading of scripture as if it were a textbook of science. Do we really have to keep making the same mistake as the Christian fundamentalists do about the Bible in our reading and understanding of Swedenborg's writings?
About technology on other planets:
ReplyDeleteSwedenborg was fascinated with technology. He himself made a number of inventions in his younger years, one of which was a glider-type flying machine. He avidly studied and used all sorts of technological advances, such as telescopes and microscopes. During his working years he was immersed in mining technology. He even traveled to mainland Europe to study and bring back to his native Sweden the best mining technology on the continent.
It therefore strains credulity to think that Swedenborg could have encountered an advanced technological civilization and not commented on it. If any of them had possessed any sort of flying machine, that would have held great fascination for him. There's no way he would not have mentioned it.
Technology certainly can be discussed in the spiritual world, even if it may take place in spiritual concepts that must be translated into material concepts. Swedenborg commonly describes the fruits of technology in the spiritual world: He describes dwellings ranging from tents through wooden dwellings to vast palaces of stone and crystal. He describes books and libraries. He describes horse-drawn vehicles--which were the most advanced transportation technology that existed in his day.
In fact, it's clear from his descriptions of the spiritual world that the technology in the spiritual world keeps pace with the technology here on earth. Each society and civilization that he describes there lives at the level of "material" advancement and technology that it had possessed while it was still living on earth.
Swedenborg was also able to imagine technology beyond what was actually possessed in his day, as evidenced by his invention of a flying machine and a submarine. If he had encountered airplanes and space ships among any of the extraterrestrial societies, they would not have been beyond the ability of his mind to grasp.
So the idea that the extraterrestrial societies he encountered may have had technology, but Swedenborg just didn't perceive or encounter it, doesn't hold water.
And in fact, Swedenborg specifically denies that they had advanced technology.
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ReplyDeleteIt's not just a matter of Swedenborg not perceiving advanced technology in the extraterrestrial races he encountered. As I just said, there is no good reason to think that he could not have been aware of advanced technology among extraterrestrials.
The reality is that he specifically denied that the inhabitants of other planets have advanced technology.
First, there are the descriptions of their lifestyle, which is a simple, agrarian or hunter/gatherer lifestyle. The most advanced "technology" he describes is on a planet in which the inhabitants weave growing trees into lofty temples for the worship of God. But the inhabitants themselves live in simple, low dwellings. He even describes the inhabitants of one planet as looking like the simple peasant peoples of our world.
His specific denial of advanced technology, though, comes in the context of the chapter in Earths in the Universe about why the Lord was born on this earth and not on any other (#113-122).
The main reason, he says, is for the sake of the Word (the Bible), which could be published here and preserved, unlike on other planets.
Why could it not be published on other planets? Because there is no written language on other planets; only spoken language. Our planet, Swedenborg says, has uniquely developed written language, and later the printing press, making it possible for the Word to be written, published, and preserved here.
He even provides the reason why such advanced technology was developed on our planet and not on other planets: the people of our planet are far more materialistic than the people of other planets. We focus on material things, and that material focus has caused us to develop technology, which involves the manipulation of the physical world.
The inhabitants of other planets, by contrast, are spiritually oriented. They are not concerned with their physical bodies or with material things except as much as to maintain their physical health and wellbeing as a basis for spiritual development. So for them, technology would be uninteresting and useless.
Based on all of this, thinking of the inhabitants of Mars and Venus as technologically advanced beings living underground on those planets contradicts everything Swedenborg wrote about them. He described simple, spiritually oriented races of people living on the surface of the planet in ecosystems similar to ours on earth. If, instead, they are advanced technological civilizations living underground, that does not in any way, shape, or form support what Swedenborg wrote about the inhabitants of other planets.
So once again, even though I know you intend to support Swedenborg by going for all the UFO stuff, if that UFO stuff is true, it actually contradicts and undermines everything Swedenborg wrote about the inhabitants of other planets.
There is a very simple reason we haven't made contact with the inhabitants of other worlds: The inhabitants of other worlds have no interest in technology because they understand far better than we do the true reason for our physical existence. That reason is the development of our spiritual self to prepare us for eternal life in the spiritual world.
In short, they have no interest in exploring other physical worlds because their focus is on spiritual development.
Hello Lee,
DeleteFirst, we should mention here that Swedenborg stated that he never saw the actual planet's surface - except in one case outside our solar system. He was communicating with them in the spiritual world, and somehow these extraterrestrials became associated with the planet in the spiritual world. He is not infallible, he was limited by the scientific knowledge of his day. And just as he is not infallible, the reasons he gave for why the Lord chose to be born on his own planet are likely based on his own reasons but not based on fact.
So, let's consider the underground hypothesis, that for whatever reason, these extraterrestrials are advanced and have decided to live underground to keep a close eye on us - perhaps the bacteria on earth is deadly to them, they want to remain unknown to our primitive society, or they simply don't want to be around us listening to our thoughts telepathically since our race is so materialistic and violent. Actually they told Swedenborg exactly that - they want to avoid us for that very reason. In one case Swedenborg may have confused telepathic communication with a sound vibration of the Eustachian tube.
If we look at "Earths in the Universe," he was not given any information for the surface of the planet Mercury, nor for the Moon, nor for Venus, nor for Mars. There is nothing there stating they dwell on the surface. For Mercury, they tend to wander about different solar systems, perhaps indicating its just a temporary base for them. Why Mercury? Perhaps its close for extracting energy from the Sun. And they are not interested in temples or buildings - things that dwell on the surface, but for them they just simply dont care about material things. The only ones where he describes a surface environment are for Jupiter and Saturn. He is most probably incorrect here, unless he happened to be pulling up their memories of their home planet. Again, he states he never saw the surface of these planets.
One reason why I consider the underground hypothesis is that it has come up multiple times in multiple contact cases, from independent witness, some who kept the information private until they publicized in many years later. I did not get this from Swedenborg whatsoever. The hypothesis is not valid for Jupiter or Saturn. Once his vision goes outside the solar system, notice how surface descriptions become more common.
So, just because an extraterrestrial is seen in association with a planet does not mean they evolved there. It could mean they migrated there. Which is exactly what one contact case said for Venus and Mars - they migrated there from Tau Ceti. His extraterrestrial source described dark matter, long before modern science knew about it.
Also, you are assuming that an advanced race becomes more technological in their daily living. This is a bit of a larger topic, but when they become more spiritually advanced, they live a simpler life, with less material things. They showed one person the value of living a simple life close to nature. In certain cases, they described how the effort we put into technology is actually going backwards. One can observe this in how more and more people are having less social activity, and depend on the internet. Or we are polluting the earth with our technology, or creating a lot of waste. You really dont need much to live a happy life if you are spiritual. And some of them described how they consider exploration as a part of their spiritual development.
So that's my hypothesis for now. For Jupiter and Saturn, yes, that is problematic, but the description he gives could have been just simply been drawn from the memory of their origination, wherever that may be.
Hi Doug,
DeleteI'm sorry, but the general impression I get is that you reject anything Swedenborg says about extraterrestrials that doesn't fit with UFO "findings." And along with that rejection, you also reject, or at least seriously doubt, the statements in most distinctive theological chapter in the book, on why the Lord was born on our earth, and not any other.
How is this supporting what Swedenborg says in Earths in the Universe? I thought the reason you went for the UFO stuff in the first place is that you saw it as a way to support EU?
Unfortunately, the real effect seems to be the opposite. It seems to have caused you to reject anything Swedenborg says that doesn't fit with all of the wild, unscientific UFO "information" out there.
One characteristic of falsity is that it undermines the truth. This, from my perspective, is what's happening in your embrace of UFO lore as truth.
I hope that one day you'll see that there is simply no real, solid evidence for UFOs. For anyone not caught up in the craze, it's as obvious as the nose on one's face.
Lee, all I said is Swedenborg was limited by the scientific knowledge of his day. And one has to use one's judgment when reading his writings. There are cases where he uses a mistranslation of scripture, a plain error right in Heavenly Arcana. Even in his visions, he often says, "It was given for me to know" or "It was given to me to ask." Answers were given if only he knew what to ask or what to focus on. For scientific achievements, check, he only asks one of the societies. Not all of them. One group made an effort to hide what they knew. Another was "higher" than he in terms of intelligence. As I said, some of them in these contact cases showed that although they were highly advanced, they lived very simple lives close to nature.
DeleteAs for the reason why the Lord was born on our earth, the one reason that I accept is the one as revealed in scripture, that mankind became cutoff from heaven and had become materialistic in nature. By becoming incarnate, God could now interact with each human being more closely through his Holy Spirit flowing through the Divine Human. Instead of receiving heavenly visions, as many other societies, this race is dependent of God's Word revealed through scripture. What Swedenborg says closely matches that, based on the knowledge of his day.
The other reason why I think the Lord was born on this earth, is that we are extremely interesting and the object of study by these other extraterrestrial races. If the Lord was born on this earth, at some point, these other extraterrestrial races would also somehow become aware of that, either through them visiting us, or we eventually visiting them. This is not something Swedenborg could conceive in his day.
As for the relationship between Swedenborg and possible UFO contacts, the contacts show indications that the human race is indeed widespread across other solar systems. There have been UFO sightings in the vicinity of the Moon, Mars and Saturn. So it is not undermining the truth, it is confirming it.
As for hard scientific evidence which is what you said you wanted, examine the cattle mutilations, what the experts say, and tell me what you think of that. I have given you the hard evidence in an earlier comment. So don't jump to conclusions before examining the evidence, I had also rejected it offhand before looking at it more closely.
Hi Doug,
DeleteThe alien cattle mutilations theory is precisely the sort of thing that assures me that the UFO phenomenon is a craze, and based on human fears and wishful thinking. This stuff is just so crazy that no stable, rational, scientific person could believe it. Aliens really develop advanced faster-than-light vehicles in order to travel hundreds, thousands, or millions of light years to earth so that they can cut up our cattle? The whole idea is just too ridiculous for words.
It also amounts to an argument from ignorance: since we don't know what caused some of these things, it must be aliens.
If it were theology, this would be called a "God of the gaps" argument: if we can't figure out what caused some physical phenomenon, it must be caused by God.
In both cases, it's bad logic, bad science, and bad theology.
Over time, such arguments from ignorance also increase rejection of their hypotheses so "demonstrated" because we gradually learn what actually causes the phenomena claimed to be evidence for God, or for aliens, and it becomes obvious that the arguments made on this basis are worthless and false.
Unlike spiritual phenomena, aliens and UFOs are considered to be physical, material things. We therefore need real, physical, scientific evidence of their existence.
Quite honestly, I am getting very tired of following up all these links to "real evidence" and finding more and more pseudo-science, blurry photos, and crazy conspiracy theories.
I've followed enough of them by now to convince me that there is no real science or evidence behind the claims of UFO enthusiasts.
The lack of any real evidence is why no reputable scientist thinks UFOs are even worth investigating.
I'm sorry, Doug, but you're chasing Alice down the rabbit hole with this whole UFO thing. The sooner you realize that, the better.
Hello Lee,
DeleteI didnt publish your other comments because you are mentioning viewpoints that I do not hold to be true and my viewpoints supporting New Church theology are well laid out in other posts; there is much in the "UFO Lore" that I outright reject. The revelation given to Swedenborg, and the theology, is the most comprehensive revelation I have ever seen. But his knowledge of other worlds is limited. So, but briefly, we can't put all of this neatly into one box, because life out there is probably varied beyond our imagination, I have seen three main viewpoints of "others" on the matter of Jesus Christ:
1. That the Lord is the God of the universe incarnate.
2. That Jesus is some sort of evolved master or teacher.
3. A false negative view of Jesus, put out there with the intention to deceive by using religion as a tool.
The one I accept, as explained elsewhere is that the Lord is the God of this universe incarnate. There does happen to be reports of multiple groups who follow that view as well as the Bible.
But for the moment, lets leave religion and extraterrestrials out of this. Lets look at the factual scientific evidence of cattle mutilations. This has been examined by local law enforcement, by the FBI, and animal pathologists. We also have autopsy reports. We have dead bodies, pretend lets say we are on a jury of a criminal case. We have perhaps four possible theories as to the cause:
1. Animal predation.
2. A Satanic cult.
3. A psychopath who likes to torture animals at night. Who never leaves footprints or tracks.
4. A nocturnal biologist who has access to high precision surgical instruments. Who sometimes throws cows up into tree branches.
Which one is it? The evidence immediately rules out #1. So how do we explain this evidence away? When I didnt look at the evidence, I went with #2, this must be a Satanic cult. I am completely open to any suggestion here that fits the evidence. And yes, it is like Alice going down a rabbit hole. A rabbit hole with a mutilated rabbit. As Richard D. Hall said, "When you remove the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Then after that, one has to consider possible motives. I would point anyone to this study done by NASA: Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis. In it they say this:
"...details about our biology, though seemingly harmless, may actually help certain ETI to cause us harm. A malicious ETI listener may use a message about human biology to design a potent biological weapon for use against Earth. Since these messages will ultimately be sent toward unknown ETI, we cannot know whether or not they might be received by such a malicious ETI. Therefore, caution is warranted."
Hi Doug,
DeleteIt's still an argument from ignorance. There's no positive evidence whatsoever that aliens mutilated the cattle.
If we actually saw the aliens mutilating the cattle, that would be evidence.
Instead, what we see is something we can't explain. Saying that "aliens must have done it" is neither scientific nor rational.
I understand if you don't want to publish those comments of mine. However, they do show that the stance you are taking on UFOs is contrary to what Swedenborg wrote in almost every respect.
DeleteThe least important part of Earths in the Universe is identifying the planets from which the alien races came. That is a material matter, and is of little import in writings whose purpose is spiritual.
The most important part of Earths in the Universe is its confronting the questions of how there could be humanoid life on other planets if they do not have access to salvation in Jesus Christ (according to traditional Christianity) and why Jesus Christ was born on our planet, and not one of the other myriads of inhabited planets out there.
I understand that you accept Swedenborgian theology. If it were not so, I would not even bother having this conversation with you.
And I do not accuse you of personally holding some of the views that you present here as being held by aliens about reincarnation and such. However, you are passing on views supposedly held by aliens that according to Swedenborg are not held by aliens--and that in particular are not held by the specific aliens (from Venus, Mars, etc) who are said in the UFO lore to hold those beliefs.
The main point is that the UFO lore that you seem to think supports Swedenborg actually contradicts Swedenborg.
Or more specifically, it "supports" the least important parts of Earths in the Universe while contradicting the most important parts of Earths in the Universe.
And in general, it contradicts the spiritual character, nature, and beliefs of the aliens Swedenborg describes.
The only reason I'm having this debate with you is that you do accept Swedenborg's teachings. And UFO lore, if accepted, does great damage to those teachings. It makes it more difficult for people to accept the spiritual teachings of Swedenborg even while it gives superficial (but not real) support to the relatively unimportant material statements in Earths in the Universe.
Lee, some people have seen it. It is beyond belief. Which is why I say look at the physical evidence first. Earlier I probably would have laughed at it.
DeleteSo, for Earths in the Universe, my original hypothesis was these are other worldly societies that are closer in spiritual character to our planetary society in the spiritual world. And that may still be true, I have my doubts, but we shall see.
For those within the church, this is all a minor issue. But outside the church, there are many involved in New age spirituality movements which get involved in this and have no guidance whatsoever on these spiritual matters.
Hi Doug,
DeleteI consider it settled scientific fact that the alien races Swedenborg described as coming from the other then-known planets in our solar system did not, in fact, come from those planets.
We know that none of those planets is or ever was habitable by advanced life forms. The gas giants may not even have a solid core. And none of those planets could have the surface conditions that Swedenborg ascribes to them. He does mention the absence of atmosphere on Earth's moon, but gives no reasonable explanation as to how the moon could be habitable without an atmosphere.
Based on Swedenborg's descriptions, those races do, however, seem to have come from a planetary region near that of our planet in the spiritual world. This is strange, since their character as described in EU is very different from the character of the people on our planet. Also, the locations Swedenborg assigns to them in the Grand Man (Universal Human) of heaven are far from the location he assigns to the people of our planet.
I don't quite know what to make of this.
One possible theory is that these races were/are from relatively nearby planets in the material universe, but planets in nearby solar systems rather than within our solar system.
Another possible theory is that Swedenborg was shown widely different races for his and our instruction in the differences among the different races in the universe.
Either way, it seems unlikely that these very different races would be so close to each other in the spiritual world. I suspect that the distances involved had more to do with Swedenborg's expectations for what the distances would be based on his belief that some of these races came from planets within our solar system while others came from distant planets in other solar systems. However, Swedenborg himself ascribes the greater distances in the spiritual world to greater differences in character.
All of this is a real puzzle.
However, like many puzzles in Swedenborg's writings involving the science and culture of his day, I don't think any of this seriously affects the spiritual message of the book. As I said in my article, Swedenborg was consciously using this fascinating topic to draw people toward his theology. Clearly the theology was far more important to him than the descriptions and locations of the alien races.
About people involved in the New Age movement:
DeleteConvention (aka The Swedenborgian Church) has made a number of attempts to reach out to people in the New Age movement. Though a few people have come into the church from that direction, in general I would say that these efforts have not been very successful. There are more converts from traditional Protestant and Catholic backgrounds than from the New Age movement.
Though there are some points of commonality, such as an acceptance of spiritual reality as present around and within us, an acceptance of people from different spiritual paths and backgrounds, and a focus on individual spiritual growth, for the most part the quasi-theology of the New Age movement simply isn't compatible with New Church theology.
In particular, New Church theology is highly and specifically Christian, whereas the New Age generally embraces inputs from every religion except Christianity--but mainly from the Eastern religions. Instead of being God With Us, Jesus becomes a highly evolved master. Instead of having one life on earth that prepares us for eternal life in either heaven or hell, we are reborn multiple times until we re-merge with God. Instead of a clear distinction between Creator and created beings, there is a merging and blurring of the boundaries that separate what Christians see as the infinite and the finite.
All of this makes the New Church a hard sell in the New Age movement. My own experience in two or three different Convention churches and ministries that reach out to the New Age movement is that New Agers may link arms with liberal New Church people, and use their facilities, but they will stick to their New Age beliefs, and will rarely become Swedenborgians.
There are a few exceptions. The effort has not been a total failure. But it also has not been much of a success in building up the New Church.
As for cattle mutilations and other supposed "evidence" of UFOs and aliens, I'll say once again that every time I actually spend the time to look up the "evidence," it turns out to be so flimsy that it cannot stand up to real rational and scientific scrutiny.
DeleteBy now I have gotten tired of spending hours looking up "the real thing" only to find that it is yet another tissue of blurry photos, second-hand reports of "reputable" scientists and government figures whose stories just don't check out, and more crazy conspiracy theories about government cover-ups and aliens messing with our bodies and minds.
If these aliens had such superior technology to ours, they would not need to study the reproductive organs of cows in order to figure out how to defeat us. Apparently they can easily shut down all of our technology with the wave of a hand. And if they were malevolent, presumably they would have advanced weapons systems that would make all of our defenses look like play fortresses made of tinkertoys and lincoln logs.
Plus, if their technology were so advanced, there would be no particular reason for them to be so fascinated with a backwards world such as ours. What would they gain from it that they don't already have?
The whole thing plays out as a projection of our own fears in the technological age projected into the skies. Alien invasions are a staple of science fiction because they play on our fears of losing control and being taken over by the monster of science that we have created.
If we look at the whole UFO phenomenon as the playing out of issues and fears that are really religious and spiritual rather than physical, it all makes sense. The UFO phenomenon is a substitute religion for people of a certain frame of mind. And it all plays out like a religious cult that thrives on mystery, shadows, and fear.
There are no real, solid, physical UFOs visiting our planet.
But there are projections of our spiritual and psychological fears and hopes flying around us all the time. And these projections become UFOs and aliens for many people for whom the more traditional religious approaches of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and so on do not work.
It's not science. It's a religion substitute in a technological age. Once you understand that, the whole thing makes perfect sense.
Hello Lee - there is physical evidence of solid UFOs - if they were just psychological, we would not have radar reports of something solid. And they maneuver in ways that none of our aircraft can. In the early days, we scrambled our jets after them. This is all documented. And there are many reputable witnesses: including scientists, military contractor, military sources, pilots, and government sources.
DeleteHowever it was not that that got me suspicious to take a closer look, it was the tampering of a photo to remove a UFO from a video. Then I found more image tampering to alter the photo to remove UFOs. And witnesses have come out of NASA who have said there is very active department that removes these things from photos before they publicize them. There are many, many dead ends in this area, and one reason for that is a "poisoning of the well" activity of the evidence. You can find a lot of those hoaxers quite active on youtube. Still things slip through, you can see these UFOs in Apollo Mission photos, and some of these are accompanied by the testimony of astronauts. you have to constantly keep your guard up and make sure you check the facts. However, since it looks like you want hard material evidence, I would start with the cattle mutilations. There are other theories on motive but that's for another time.
The problem I have with saying that Swedenborg was seeing only spiritual societies that have no relation to the planets in the physical, is that he was able to clairvoyantly describe the fire of Stockholm in 1759, with details surrounding its time and location. Highly accurate. Then we have Earths in the Universe. This is puzzling. I find it very telling that Swedenborg does not give surface information for the Moon or the inner planets. I just checked on Saturn, again, nothing to indicate any sort of surface living. Even for Saturn he associated with those who travel about between solar systems.
So that means there is now one big disagreement between our known science and Swedenborg: this concerns Jupiter. He definitely describes surface living there, and we know for certain Jupiter has no surface capable of sustaining life. This is in fact the only scientific disagreement we have. It is here where I agree he is only seeing a spiritual society: there is some scientific speculation that there was once another planet in our solar system between Mars and Jupiter, that somehow was destroyed, what we have there now is the asteroid belt. Again, all of this is just a hypothesis.
Hi Doug,
DeleteWhat I want for UFOs is exactly the same as I'd want for any other naturally occurring, physical phenomenon: scientific evidence that the body of actual, practicing scientists accept as real evidence. So far we have zero.
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories of vast government cover-ups amount to an argument from ignorance. We can't conclude that UFOs are real based on a lack of evidence. Even if the cover-up were real (which it is not), we would still have to have real, actual evidence that stands up to scientific scrutiny in order to conclude that UFOs are real.
So far we have zero such evidence.
Hi Doug,
DeleteYes, Swedenborg was able to describe the fire of Stockholm, and he had several other documented clairvoyant episodes. However, these were all things that fell well within the science and culture of his day. City fires were a known phenomenon. Hidden receipts were a known phenomenon. Secrets between siblings were a known phenomenon.
The difference between these clairvoyant episodes and the descriptions in Earths in the Universe is that Swedenborg had a prior belief, based on the science and culture of his day, that all planets must be inhabited. He even says that every moon of every planet must be inhabited, though he does not describe inhabitants on the then-known moons of Jupiter and Saturn--only inhabitants of Earth's moon.
So in Earths in the Universe Swedenborg was dealing with a topic that required science that did not exist in his day. And much of what he "knew" about the science of other planets has turned out to be incorrect. Unlike those clairvoyant episodes, the supporting science and cultural knowledge just wasn't there.
It is therefore comparing apples and oranges to draw conclusions about Swedenborg's descriptions of races inhabiting the other planets in our solar system based on his more earth-bound clairvoyant experiences.
There is not just one disagreement between modern interplanetary science and Swedenborg's descriptions of people inhabiting the other planets in our solar system. There is a vast amount of science that contradicts even the remotest possibility that his descriptions of people inhabiting Mercury, Venus, Earth's moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn could be true.
DeleteEarth is the only planet in our solar system that has had suitable surface conditions long enough for advanced life forms to develop.
Mercury and Earth's moon are barren wastelands pocked with craters and constantly irradiated by the unfiltered rays of the sun. Not even microbial life can survive on their surfaces.
Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect such that it has temperatures and pressures at its surface that do not allow any ecosystem to develop, and probably not any life at all.
Mars has a very thin atmosphere that also does not allow the development of an ecosystem, though scientists are still hoping to find evidence of simple life forms there. So far, they have not found any.
The gas giants, including Jupiter and Saturn, have no known solid surface, though they may have a semi-molten metal core. Due to their massive atmospheres, the temperatures and pressures at any surface they might have would be so great as to not allow any life forms to develop.
Some scientists think and hope that a few of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn might have conditions under their frozen surfaces that might allow simple life forms to develop. But no scientists expect to find advanced, intelligent life there.
Furthermore, as I've already said, the dimensions Swedenborg assigns to the fourth planet in another solar system make it impossible for that planet to have an atmosphere and support the life on its surface that Swedenborg describes.
In short, there is a vast body of science, with massive amounts of data to support it, showing that most of the planets Swedenborg describes as hosting intelligent life simply couldn't do so, now or ever in their history.
The beliefs of UFO enthusiasts as applied to what Swedenborg wrote in Earths in the Universe require us to reject nearly all of the solidly established science about the habitability of planets, and replace it with a whole lot of junk science, conspiracy theories, and wishful thinking.
Personally, I'll take real science over junk science and conspiracy theories any day.
And I am sure that Swedenborg would, too.
I would suggest that you drop the UFO stuff for a while, and spend some time reading real science about planets and solar systems. If you did, you could not possibly make many of the statements you do here about people living on the various planets in our solar system.
The thing is, Doug, current science does provide strong support for Swedenborg's main premise: that the universe is full of life.
DeleteIn fact, current science makes it possible, and even likely, that there are far more inhabited planets in the universe that Swedenborg could conceive of.
The biggest numbers Swedenborg uses in Earths in the Universe are on the order of millions. But current science expands that number to perhaps hundreds of billions or even trillions of trillions of possible inhabited planets in the known universe.
In other words, current science offers the possibility of much better support for Swedenborg's main contention that a single inhabited planet with a few hundred million inhabitants (in his time) would be a paltry thing for an infinite being (God), but that there must be vast numbers of inhabited planets in the universe that God created.
Really, the only adjustment we need to make is to recognize that life is not as densely packed in the universe as Swedenborg thought it was. He thought every planet in every solar system must be inhabited. We now know that this simply isn't true.
But we have also expanded the size of the universe by many orders of magnitude over what was known in Swedenborg's day. If even one in ten million stars had a single planet with advanced life forms on it, this would still mean hundreds of billions of inhabited planets in the universe. The much more vast space of the universe allows for more inhabited planets than Swedenborg could conceive of, even if they are less densely packed in the universe.
According to one recent theory, there may even be more inhabited planets per solar system than we used to think was possible. Some scientists think that tidally locked planets with thick atmospheres orbiting brown dwarf suns may be able to host life on the side of the planet that faces the sun. Surface inhabitants would never actually see the sun because of the thickness of the atmosphere, but sufficient light and heat from the dwarf sun would get through to make conditions suitable for life on the surface.
This would apply only to planets inhabiting stars much smaller than our own. But there are huge numbers of such stars, which were previously thought to be poor candidates for hosting planets with life on them. If that huge stock of stars is brought into the stable of stars having solar systems that could support life, the number of potentially habitable planets in the universe suddenly multiplies many times over.
I didn't include this particular possibility in my Aliens vs. Advent article because it is still very speculative.
The main point is that current science makes it highly likely that Swedenborg was right about a universe teeming with life. It's just that it looks to be much more spread out than Swedenborg thought it was based on the very limited solar and planetary science of his day.
Meanwhile, Swedenborg offers a great resolution to one of the biggest problems causing skepticism about extraterrestrial life among scientists.
DeleteThe question among scientists is, where are all the people?
This is the Fermi paradox that is famous among scientists interested in the issue of extraterrestrial life.
The problem as scientists see it is that if the universe were teeming with life as many scientists believe it must be, why haven't we been visited by the inhabitants of other planets? By now, so the theory goes, there should have been many other civilizations in our galaxy alone to have developed high technology. And yet, despite some rather expensive efforts to find and contact extraterrestrial life, so far there is not a single scrap of real, scientific evidence for alien visitors to this planet, or for technologically advanced civilizations anywhere within communications range.
The Fermi Paradox is why many scientists remain skeptical about the existence of other inhabited planets. Some theories have been developed that might account for it. But it remains a big problem for the science of extraterrestrial life.
As it turns out, the Fermi Paradox is easily and neatly solved by Swedenborg's descriptions of alien races and their character in Earths in the Universe.
Since we are a materialistic, technological society, and our science assumes that all things must be based on material reality alone, we naturally assume that other planetary civilizations would develop similar to our own, developing high technology, including the capability of interstellar travel, over time.
But in Swedenborg's system, the material universe is not self-contained. It exists to serve a higher purpose: a heaven from the human race. And, he says, races of people on other planets are far more in tune with that purpose than we are, because they are far less materialistic, and far more spiritually oriented, than we are.
Simply put, Swedenborg says that unlike our materialistic race, the races inhabiting other planets have no interest in developing science and technology because they are focused on spiritual development rather than material development.
So the resolution to the Fermi Paradox that Swedenborg offers is very simple:
We see no evidence of advanced, technological extraterrestrial life because most, if not all other planets simply don't bother developing high technology as our race on this planet has. The races on other planets have no radios, no television, no spaceships, and none of the other technology that would make it possible for them to visit us, or for us to detect their civilizations through the use of radio telescopes calibrated to pick up their radio signals.
If we drop all the pseudo-science of the UFO enthusiasts and look at the real science of real scientists studying the universe, Swedenborg's descriptions of alien cultures fits beautifully with what we actually observe: A universe that is likely teeming with life, but without any technologically advanced life that we can detect.
It all has to do with the universe having a spiritual purpose.
We don't have to reject the best science of today and go for shadowy, unscientific theories in order to support Swedenborg's Earths in the Universe. We simply have to adjust our thinking to recognize that life is more spread out in the universe than Swedenborg thought, and recognize that Swedenborg was laboring under insufficient scientific knowledge to provide a proper physical basis for his experience of other planetary races in the spiritual world. Then everything falls neatly into place.
Not only would the existence of real UFOs contradict what Swedenborg wrote about the people of other planets (as I've already pointed out), but UFOs simply aren't necessary in order to provide strong support for the most important ideas that Swedenborg articulates in Earths in the Universe.
Lee, we do have evidence. Radar reports have shown this:
Delete1. Solid objects that can accelerate from 0 to 4000 mph in about a second.
2. During that time, they can make 90 degree turns without changing speed.
3. These radar blips can suddenly disappear off the radar in an instant.
4. Fighter jets have made visual confirmation that an object was actually there.
5. In some cases, the fighter jet signal merged with the UFO signal. Both pilot and fighter jet disappeared without a trace.
6. Some witnesses within NORAD have confirmed that they track these things.
I am not aware of a good book that gathers the radar evidence, but for other physical evidence you can try The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence by a professor emeritus of Space Science and Astrophysics at Stanford. It is boring, skeptical, and objective, but it covers the scientific evidence gathered by a group of highly credentialed scientists. Probably better is The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry by Hynek, who was chariman of NW university astronomy department. This is the scientist who was in charge of Project Blue Book who was approached by the air force to explain it away, but as he looked at the unexplainable cases, he changed from hardline skeptic to a UFO advocate. There is Flying Saucers and Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs by Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist, with a foreward by Dr. Edgar Mitchell, a former astronaut. Richard Dolan has written a massive work but from a historical perspective. Dr. Steven Greer has gathered hours of witness testimony from military, government and scientific sources. Some of these are from black budget projects that are "non acknowledged" to government officials.
If you or someone in Bryn Athyn wants to dig deeper, there is a retired homicide detective in Pennsylvania who was involved in a rather odd case a few years ago. He can give an expert opinion on some evidence that the above scientists cannot.
Hello Lee, havent had time to review everything, but you make one interesting statement: that Swedenborg's verified clairvoyant experiences and his views on other planets are like comparing apples and oranges. So, how do we explain this about Saturn:
Delete"They were asked about that great ring which appears from our earth to rise above the horizon of that planet, and to vary its situation. They said that it does not appear to them as a ring, but only as a snowy light in the sky, varying in direction." (EU, n. 104, published in 1758)
Which was taken from this earlier passage:
"They were asked concerning that great belt, which appears from our earth to be elevated above the horizon of that planet and to vary its positions. They said that it does not appear to them as a belt, but only as a snowy light in the heaven in various directions." (Heavenly Arcana, n. 8952, published in 1749-1756)
This statement goes against what astronomers of Swedenborg's day were saying concerning the rings of Saturn. In 1675 Cassini determined Saturn's ring was composed of multiple rings. In 1787 Laplace stated that these rings were composed of a large number of solid ringlets. In 1859 Maxwell finally demonstrated that the rings could not be solid, but composed of particles. This was verified in 1895. And now, we have the Cassini probe giving us shots of the rings, showing that it is composed of ice particles. And indeed it looks like snowy light. Literally made out of snow balls.
Problem here, of course, is not only does Saturn have no surface, but once one enters into a certain depth of the atmosphere the reflection of the rings will no longer be visible. So if they were visible, they could only be visible above the atmosphere of Saturn. And probes including Cassini have observed some very unusual anomalies in these rings around Saturn, which I covered earlier in The Cylindrical UFOs of Saturn.
And now we have the former Canadian minister of Defense, Paul Hellyer, stating that one group of extraterrestrials comes from one of Saturn's moons. He sounds so certain. Not sure where he got this information.
So here is a problem: if Swedenborg was only seeing spiritual societies, how was something accurate relayed of the physical structure of the rings over a hundred years before it was confirmed by science? Not everything Swedenborg said was correct as you pointed out, but one has to distinguish what was shown via vision, and when he starts talking from his own reasoning.
And yes, the surfaces are uninhabitable. And in multiple contact cases, separate individual cases reported that they said they lived underground - and said this was the more common way other societies lived. This means that assumptions we have made on the "Goldilocks zone" are incorrect. Imagine an advanced society whose planet is dying, seeking a habitat. Surface dwelling planets are rare. But living under the surface, much easier to develop technologies that would allow for that.
As for Fermi's paradox, some solutions are here: 11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox. I subscribe to the "Zoo hypothesis" where we are under quarantine requiring observation. Yours is called "All Aliens are homebodies." One weird one is "We're Made out of Meat."
Hi Doug,
DeleteThanks for the book references. However, I have grown tired of looking up one reference after another, only to find that it isn't what it claims to be.
Basically, the main body of scientists have rejected the UFO hypothesis because there is no evidence for their existence that can withstand scientific scrutiny.
When the main body of scientists determines that there is sufficient evidence, then I will begin to take UFOs seriously.
But I don't think that's ever going to happen, because I don't think they are a physical reality.
Hi Doug,
DeleteAbout the rings of Saturn, Swedenborg's descriptions of their appearance from the surface are fraught with problems.
First, as you say, if the inhabitants of Saturn were surface-dwellers, the rings would not appear at all. Ditto if they were subterranean dwellers.
Second, what we actually see when we look at Saturn is a shadow cast across the cloud surface of the planet by the rings. To my knowledge, the rings do not provide significant light to the cloud tops compared to the light of the sun itself.
Swedenborg's argument is that Saturn has those large rings because it is farthest from the sun, so that the planet requires the rings to provide more light to the surface. However, not only do the rings not provide significant additional light to the "surface," but we now know that there are two more gas giants located farther away from the sun than Saturn, neither of which has a ring system significant enough to make any difference in the lighting of the planet. If Swedenborg's ring hypothesis were correct, we would expect Uranus and Neptune to have still more spectacular and reflective ring systems. But they do not.
Perhaps the people Swedenborg identifies as coming from Saturn do have some celestial phenomenon around their planet that causes them to see a snowy, reflective light. Perhaps it is actually what we call "northern lights"--a polar magnetic phenomenon. In any case, the rings of Saturn simply don't cause the phenomenon that Swedenborg ascribes to them.
No matter which planet we consider, Swedenborg's statements about its habitability fall to the ground in the light of modern science.
The most reasonable hypothesis that does not involve rejecting Swedenborg's spiritual-world experiences altogether is that he did indeed meet beings from other planets, but misidentified them as coming from the then-known planets in our solar system.
If Swedenborg were truly prescient, and could see beyond the science of his day, he would have described people living on Uranus and Neptune also. But he did not. That's because the science incorporated into his theological writings is no more advanced than the best science of his day.
Hi Doug,
DeleteThe underground dwellers hypothesis does not work for me. If you are aware of any articles by reputable scientists (not UFO enthusiasts) that examine the scientific possibility of intelligent life developing underground, I would like to see them.
However, all of the science I am aware of makes surface-dwelling a necessity for the development of advanced life forms. There simply isn't enough space, nor is there enough energy, underground to develop the complex ecosystems required to host and support advanced, intelligent life forms.
Perhaps intelligent beings could move underground if their planets' surfaces became uninhabitable. But there is not a hint of that in Earths in the Universe. Everything Swedenborg writes assumes that all races live on the surface.
Also, as I've said many times, Swedenborg considers our planet unique in developing advanced technology. And advanced technology would be necessary for humanoids that had evolved on the surface of a planet to survive underground for any length of time.
The underground dwellers hypothesis seems to me more to be a last-ditch effort to make habitable planets we know beyond a shadow of a doubt are uninhabitable by advanced life forms, and probably uninhabitable by any life forms at all.
I've read some of your previous links to articles about the possibility of underground life on other planets. But as I pointed out at the time, these were about the possibility of very simple life forms such as microbes and perhaps very small multi-cellular organisms. None of those articles contemplated the possibility of advanced, complex life forms developing underground.
Hi Doug,
DeleteThanks for the link to "11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox." That one I did follow and read, and found enjoyable.
However, even the "all aliens are homebodies" hypothesis assumes that an advanced race would develop advanced technology. In fact, all of these "weirdest" solutions seem to assume that developing advanced technology would be the natural and almost inevitable progression of an intelligent race.
Swedenborg's hypothesis is that this simply isn't the case. His hypothesis is that a truly advanced race would recognize something we as a race generally don't: that the very purpose of our existence here in the material universe is to develop into spiritual beings.
In other words, Swedenborg's hypothesis is not that we humans are uniquely advanced as some solutions of the Fermi Paradox posit, but rather that we are uniquely stupid and clueless about the reason for our existence--and that that is precisely why we waste our time developing material technology when what we really should be doing is developing our spiritual love, knowledge, and capabilities.
Even I find it unlikely that no other race would develop high technology. Considering how big the Universal Human is, would we really be the only race that corresponds to the skin? Or even the only race that corresponds to the skin on the bottom of the feet, which makes regular contact with the earth (representing the material world)?
It would seem to me that given the vastness of the Universal Human there must be many races that fulfill the functions of the skin of the bottom of the feet, and that would therefore be interested in developing material things such as advanced technology.
Having said that, compared to the whole body, the skin of the bottom of the feet is a relatively small percentage of the body, so technologically advanced civilizations would likely be fairly rare in the universe--which is exactly what I tend to think.
However, it's also possible that there simply is no need in the spiritual economy for any other planet besides ours to develop advanced technology. After all, the primary purpose of technology, according to Swedenborg, is that the Word, with its record of the Lord's Incarnation, should be written and preserved for all time.
If that is the case, why would God need, or provide for, any other planetary races to develop advanced technology? Perhaps, under the Divine Providence, we truly are unique in developing high technology.
I still find this idea hard to swallow. But it's just possible that Swedenborg was right on this one, and that we are the only race in the universe to develop high technology.
It's something to consider, anyway.
About the zoo hypothesis:
DeleteThe problem I see with this is that it assumes all of these alien civilizations would actually abide by the rules.
Here on earth, we have many wildlife preserves. Unfortunately, in many of them poachers commonly violate the preserves in order to further their own economic ends. Even in well-maintained and policed preserves in Europe and North America, there are many smaller encroachments, such as people littering the place with trash, or governments deciding to build oil pipelines through them.
I find it hard to believe that any quarantine could be placed upon us that would be so effective as to prevent all contact.
And in fact, if you believe in UFOs, that implies that the zoo is quite permeable indeed. What about all the alien abductions and cattle mutilations? Why aren't the zookeepers doing a better job?
Even primitive human societies on this earth living in preserves set aside by their governments are now aware that there are outside societies and that they are subject to protections imposed by that outside society. And they do make contact--intentional or unintentional--with outside societies from time to time. Sometimes those contacts are friendly, and sometimes they are unfriendly.
In short, I find it beyond credibility that there could be such an effective "zoo administration" that we would not be fully aware as a race that there are outside civilizations, and that we are under observation.
And yet, such a belief is limited to the UFO fringe.
What it all boils down to is that there is no real, scientifically defensible evidence for UFOs. If there were, as I've said many times already, it would be all over the headlines, and it would be general knowledge.
Hello Lee, in this conversation I feel like we are two fish in a fishbowl, discussing what would it be like to live in the ocean. And they are discussing whether the ocean has white pebbles or black pebbles. And someone accidentally dropped a red pebble into our fish bowl. This makes another fish very distraught. To make things look right, this fish cleverly covers up the red pebble with black and white pebbles. One of the fish is in telepathic communication with a cat who can see that fish covering up the red pebble.
DeleteSo one point, for everyone, when reading Emanuel Swedenborg, and especially Earths in the Universe, one has to distinguish between what is relayed to him in vision, and areas where he responds according to his 18th century scientific knowledge. This is very apparent when he responds concerning the temperature of Mercury. That's coming from Swedenborg. As for those of Mercury, they are the kind that desire to remain unknown, and respond in such a way that is opposite to the truth. For this area, I would say, always better to remain agnostic.
Always delighted to read your UFO pearls of wisdom- please do not overlook this vitally important subject and remember Albert Guerard's sage comment, “When you seek a path to any new truth, you must expect to find it blocked by expert opinion.”
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